There have been a few grumbles about Rob Schneider's unbilled bit in buddy Adam Sandler's "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." With his fake buck teeth, thick glasses, bowl haircut and "comical" accent, it's the sort of Asian stereotype that usually, and rightfully, draws a protest.

Except that Schneider -- as he pointed out the last time someone accused of him of doing dumb ethnic shtick -- is part Filipino.

So does that make it better? Or worse?

Of course, Schneider isn't the first person to be criticized for making fun of his own people. Philip Roth's wicked novels about the Jewish middle-class drew howls of outrage nearly 50 years ago. Every Italian-American actor or director who's ever done a Mafia movie has faced plenty of criticism from people tired of the gangster stereotyypes. And African-American rappers and comics still struggle over when -- or if -- to use certain words.

The difference, though, is that Schneider goes beyond cultural cliches (Asians as over-achievers, say) to ridicule them physically. They look funny. They talk funny. And that's the very definition of racism -- setting a group of people apart through perceived physical differences, tagging them as somehow different, somehow strange, somehow less than "us."